Thanks for Pointing out the Obvious Jon Stewart

This week Jon Stewart, the host of the Daily Show, has been making headlines for his ridicule and criticism of CNBC.  He even had Jim Cramer on yesterday and showed him clips of how wrong he was.  All Cramer could do was admit he was wrong.

Stewart even said he couldn’t find an analyst that predicted the downturn, but Peter Schiff was on CNBC many times and was dead right.  Stewart was probably too busy laughing like the rest of the people on CNBC to remember.

While Stewart is doing a good job of raising awareness that CNBC journalists, analysts, and companies do not always provide correct information, he is just restating the obvious.  Of course, it’s easy to show how wrong the people on CNBC were in the face of the worst stock market collapse in decades.  He’s just piling on harder than most people.

If Jon Stewart is so smart, where was he during the whole real estate boom?  Where was he telling us all that there was a commodities bubble when a barrel was at $140?  Why wasn’t he telling us that the stock market was going to crash?

If you want some advice from real economists you should visit www.mises.org, lewrockwell.com, campaignforliberty.com, and ronpaul.com.  Instead of some funny-man just criticizing CNBC and offering no solutions, you can learn about our economy, stock markets, and banking system and make decisions for yourself.

Uh-Oh… China Doesn’t Want Dollars

Man, Peter Schiff is a prophet.  He knew our economy was a debt filled bubble and called this recession perfectly.  Now, his prediction that China would stop funding our spending and buying our debt is coming true!

This report comes on the heels of Obama deciding to tell the whole world that we’ll be “running a trillion dollar deficit for yeasr to come!”

Tell me, Mr. President, how are we going to fund these massive spending projects if no one wants to buy our debt?  We are a debtor nation and we fuel our economy by borrowing from other countries, mainly China.  In order to borrow money, someone has to be willing to lend.  What happens when they cut us off?

This is happening in our economy right now.  No one wants to lend money.  Our banks are too busy taking care of themselves.  Well, China is doing the same thing, spending their money at home, rather than lending it to us.

We need to wake up!  We can’t keep borrowing money forever and we can’t keep growing our Federal Government.  If there was ever a time for less spending by the Feds, this is it.  Instead, they are spending at an alarming rate.

We must focus on developing industries that can export goods to China and other countries.  We need new players in old industries that can compete in a global market.  Maybe the Big Three failing would allow for new car companies to take their place that can create a car the whole world wants.

The point is that we can’t keep this economy that only spends and doesn’t produce.  We need to throw it out and start over or at least get it headed in the right direction.  Right now, almost all of our leaders are calling for more spending and more debt.  Well, if no one wants to lend us money, what happens?  All the fundamentals are wrong, and we need real answers to our economic problems, not more and more of the same.

Pulitzer Prize From a Cracker Jack Box

Today, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Paul Krugman, wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.

His main points:

1.  We thought we could prevent depressions by providing banks liquidity, but we can’t.

He’s just writing this now?  Geez, Ron Paul and Peter Schiff should have Pulitzer Prizes too!  If a layman like myself could tell that people were getting into way too much debt and that money was way too easy to come by, why couldn’t our leading economic minds?  Why couldn’t Krugman see this coming?  Oh, that’s right, because he thought we could avoid recessions, let alone depressions, by lowering interest rates.  What a joke!

2.  The only way out is to act “swiftly and boldly,” which means government needs to spend, spend, spend.

Has he been in a cave for the last 4 months?  I’m glad he notices how much good the trillions of printed dollars have done to firm up our economy!  If the banks aren’t lending now, why will they after we pump another trillion into our economy?  Please stop writing such nonsense!

3.  He’s worried because there is posturing in Washington that will prevent Obama’s massive stimulus plan.

Good!  There needs to be at least some sort of reason on Capitol Hill.  Is Krugman trying to make a play for a job on Obama’s staff?  Does he want to run the Fed now?  Why else is he being such a big government cheerleader?  Stick to your day job Paul!  Stay out of subjects you obviously don’t understand!

4.  His nightmare scenario involves “delflation that is already setting in.”

Wow, he really has drank the Kool-Aid.  This “deflation” everyone is clammoring about is 100% driven by food and energy costs dropping.  Core prices remained flat.  If you really think that inflation is a good thing, please go and educate yourself immediately!  Right now, I love getting a tank of gas for $25.  I know it won’t last, but it’s way better than getting 5 gallons for the same price.

When you are printing trillions of dollars, you are “inflating.”  Inflation is the expansion of the money supply, not rising prices.  That is a result of more dollars in circulation.  Deflation is the opposite, it is the contraction of the money supply.  That is not happening right now.  The drop in commodities (mainly oil) is being caused by the massive unwinding of leveraged investment positions, not “deflation”.  Please get your facts straight before spreading Federal Reserve propaganda, Paul.

To me, the main problem right now is a lack of confidence in the system.  Banks don’t want to lend money because they just got burned for billions of dollars.  Consumers don’t want to spend because they are already in debt up to their eyeballs and they are uncertain about their jobs or their sources of income.  Some businesses are reluctant to spend their own money because they are waiting for their own federal bailout (like the commercial real estate developers).

We need to restore faith in our economy and the way to do that is for the government to stop making panicked moves printing billions of dollars and throwing them around.  We need a sound money supply so everyone can get their footing and start to put themselves back together.  Right now, no one knows what is going to happen next, so they are all waiting it out.  If Bernanke would come out tomorrow and say “that’s it, no more money, no more bailouts” we’d probably take a huge dive tomorrow, but would be on our road to recovery.  Instead, we’re still falling deeper and deeper into the abyss.